Ace Metrix Releases the 2013 Brand of the Year Watch List

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA.—November 19, 2013—Ace Metrix®, the new standard in television and video advertising analytics, today announced the 2013 Brand of the Year Watch List, a compilation of the top performing TV brand advertisers across 20 of the year’s most competitive categories. Brands that appear on this list have earned the highest average Ace Score within their category based on their 2013 portfolio of work to date. With just over a month remaining in the year, these brands are the current candidates for the Brand of the Year distinction, a celebration of creative excellence.

“The Brand of the Year Watch List provides an early look at the brands that lead their category,” said Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix. “It is one thing to make a great ad; it is another thing entirely to create a year’s worth of great creative. What’s especially exciting in the 2013 list is the number of new brands that have consistently distinguished their advertising, often against stiff category competition, to emerge at the top of their category.”

2013 Brand of the Year Watch List by Category – brands listed alphabetically

To qualify for Ace Metrix Brand of the Year, a brand must have debuted five or more unique pieces of creative within a category or industry containing more than 80 pieces of creative and five qualifying brands as of November 6, 2013. The top 5 brands to date for each of the 20 Brand of the Year categories are represented above. Ace Metrix will reveal the final Brand of the Year winners for each category on January 7, 2014, once all ads for 2013 have been scored.

This year’s list boasts a significant number of new brands with only seven of the 2012 Brand of the Year winners making the watch list. Listed below are insights for a few of the categories. Visit acemetrix.com for more complete coverage.

Automotive

Hyundai revved up its advertising to earn a first time spot on the Lux Auto list, while sibling Kia made a first time appearance on the Non-Luxury list. Luxury American car brands struggled to compete with foreign-bred car ads with Buick representing the only domestic contender in that category. On the Non-Lux Auto side, however, 2012 Brand of the Year Winner Ford appears alongside Jeep for the Americans while Mazda, Mitsubishi and Kia round out the table.

BeveragesFurthering a trend that appeared in 2012, soda brands are noticeably absent from the list. In addition, while last year’s list saw category leaders in juice brands (Ocean Spray and Tropicana), these have given way to caffeinated drinks. Coffee-mate, Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee and Tea, International Delight and Lipton join Gatorade on the Watch List in this highly competitive category.

Unlike 2012, big beer makes a bit of a comeback in 2013 with Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors and Diageo (Guinness) joining macro-brewery Boston Beer Company on the Watch List.

FinancialEconomically, we see consumers’ attitudes towards big banks thawing, with the appearance of Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank on the list of contenders for the top spot in Financial Services – Banking, Investment & Mortgage.

RestaurantsPanera joins the ranks of the top brands for Quick Service Restaurants after investing more heavily in ad creative around their expanding menu and core values.

2012 Brand of the Year Winner Olive Garden is in familiar company with the exception of TGI Friday’s who, like Panera, was not a qualified contestant in the past but increased their creative units to secure a spot among these casual dining brands.

Technology Brands in Good Company… Their OwnThere are many stablemates among the technology lists: Apple and Samsung, known for battling it out throughout the year, each hold spots on both of the Hardware and Mobile Devices lists for their tablets and phones. Samsung is also a contender for its television brand.

Microsoft finds itself competing among its brethren in several tech categories. Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Windows and Bing are all on the Software and Websites list while Microsoft Hardware goes head-to-head with Apple, Google and the Samsungs for the Technology Hardware category. Among Video Games and Consoles, Microsoft again shares the race with Xbox Software and Xbox Hardware.

In Telecom Services, Verizon has two contenders in the race with FiOS and Wireless services duking it out against AT&T and newcomers Netflix and Hulu, the latter of which may be a sign of the content services revolution.

Brand of the Year QualificationsAce Metrix scores every nationally airing television advertisement across 23 industries, 85 categories and is therefore uniquely qualified to report a brand’s overall effectiveness across the entire video advertising industry’s body of work over a year, as well as year-over-year. To qualify for Ace Metrix Brand of the Year Watch List, brands must have debuted five or more unique pieces of creative within an industry containing more than 80 pieces of creative and five qualifying brands. The top 5 brands to date for each of the 20 categories can be found at www.acemetrix.com/news. Ace Metrix will reveal the final Brand of the Year winners in the first week of January once all ads for 2013 have been scored.

About Ace MetrixAce Metrix® is the new standard in television and video analytics, dedicated to delivering better, faster and more cost-effective solutions for evaluating video advertising within competitive context. Through the Ace Metrix LIVE® platform, companies can now access timely, actionable data wherever, whenever they need to, enabling real-time advertising campaign optimization. Combining leading edge technology and patent pending methodology, Ace Metrix is revolutionizing the way marketers measure themselves and their competitive landscape. The Company is privately held and is backed by leading venture capital firms and industry leaders including Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Palomar Ventures, Leapfrog Ventures and WPP.